Homeless after Superstorm Sandy, some pets may be displaced again

A shelter housing pets displaced by Superstorm Sandy is scheduled to close, with about half of the animals still unclaimed. The ASPCA will try to find foster homes for the animals, but their future remains uncertain.

ByPeter Rudegeair, ReutersJanuary 3, 2013

Anita Edson, (l.), checks on a shelter cat on Nov. 17, at an emergency boarding facility in the Brooklyn borough of New York. A temporary facility to house animals displaced by Superstorm Sandy will be closed this month, leaving 280 pets with an uncertain future.

What will happen to those pets whose owners fail to return is unclear. The ASPCA is looking into placing the unclaimed pets in foster homes or shelters if their owners are unreachable or unable to take them back, although no hard deadline has been given to owners, said Krause.

Following Hurricane Katrina, many similarly unclaimed pets were put up for adoption and placed in caring homes, only to have their owners surface months later and seek to get them back.

"We are still caring for the displaced pets at our emergency boarding facility, but we're also planning the next step, which is to find homes for unclaimed animals as we start to demobilize our operation," Tim Rickey, senior director of ASPCA Field Investigations and Response, said in a statement.

Most of the owners that the ASPCA has identified live in temporary housing or with family and friends, environments that prevent them from bringing their animals home, Krause said. A majority of the owners who had yet to claim their pets lived in the hard-hit Rockaways neighborhood in Queens.

Many pit bulls and mastiffs, dogs that shelters typically find hard to place given their vicious reputations, were among the unclaimed canines.

It was too early to say whether any of the pets that remain left behind would be put down, Krause said.